The Brace Octave has its roots in music.
The brace is the wavey symbol that joins 2 staffs of music, indicating that
both scores are played simultaneously. The verse form referred to as the Brace
Octave is a lyrical blend of meter and rhyme, the rhyme scheme almost taking
the shape of the brace. It could even be said that the octave itself acts as a
brace joining two envelope quatrains.

The Brace Octave is:

stanzaic, written in any
number of octaves (8 lines) made up of 2 envelope quatrains. When writing
more than one octave, even numbered stanzas grouped in twos seems to fit
best with the venue of the form.

metric, iambic tetrameter.
Some sources indicate no meter necessary but given the musical nature of
the verse, it seems to me measured lines are appropriate if not a
prerequisite. The best known poem utilizing the Brace Octave is Two Songs
from a Play by W.B.
Yeats which
is written in iambic tetrameter so I guess Mr. Yeats agrees with me.

rhymed, with an envelope
rhyme scheme abbacddc (see it does sort of look like a brace lying
down.)
Here is William Butler Yeats' poem which was published in
his book The Towerin 1928. There is a footnote from Yeats "These songs were
sung by musicians in my play Resurrection."

Although I do
believe that more pleasant poetry results from utilizing meter and a consistent
line length of iambic tetrameter or longer, I have to allow any octave using
envelope rhyme to tagged with this name.

About Me

I have been writing poetry at Allpoetry.com since Dec. 2011. During that time I have made this one of my main goals, along with writing a Sonnet Redouble, and creating specs and templates for every type of form poetry I have ever seen on that site. Enjoy, and find what you need.